The Role of the Nonprofit Sector in Hong Kong's DevelopmentWai-Fung Lam and James L. Perry

The recent handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China (PRC)
brought Hong Kong worldwide attention and scrutiny. In the run up to the
handover, the international media prominently featured stories about Hong
Kong's freewheeling capitalism and the stability created by its
administrative institutions. Lost in the media attention was the role of
nonprofit organizations and the voluntary sector in Hong Kong's political
and economic development. Although Hong Kong has a vibrant civil society,
it has received little attention from scholars. This paper reviews the
role of the third sector in Hong Kong's development. Among the issues the
paper addresses are the legal codes that govern the creation and operation
of nonprofits in Hong Kong, the evidence regarding the role of the
nonprofit sector in Hong Kong's development, particularly its relationship
to the government and market sectors, and the implications of the 1997
transition for the nonprofit sector's role.

The Knell of Utilitarianism: a Review and Theoretical Implications of
to Profit or Not to ProfitS. Wojciech Sokolowski

This paper uses the edited volume To Profit or Not to Profit; The
Commercial Transformation of the Nonprofit Sector as an opportunity to
review the theories of the nonprofit sector based on to the utility
maximization behavioral model linked to neo-classical economics. The
existence of a large nonprofit sector and its increasing commercialism
undermines the logical sufficiency of these theories to explain
organizational behavior. The book in question is an effort to solve that
problem and reconcile the utility maximization model with seemingly
contradicting evidence. In the end, however, these efforts are not very
successful and lead to the partial acceptance of an alternative model,
grounded in the neo-institutional theory of organizations.

Nonprofit's Use of Awards to Improve and Demonstrate Performance:
Valuable Discipline or Burdensome Formalities?Rob Paton and Jane Foot

Arrangements to certify that an organisation's management systems meet
standards of good practice are an increasingly prominent feature in the
environment of public and private nonprofits. This paper reports an
exploratory study of the issues that this phenomenon presents to managers
and policy makers, drawing on the limited literature, and five case
studies covering two different schemes. The main conclusions are that
nonprofits can and do use these awards in very different ways, and hence
the outcomes are diverse. These findings run counter both to the rational
system assumptions on which such arrangements are based, and to the
general thrust of institutional theory with its emphasis on isomorphism.
Some implications for decision-makers and future research are outlined.

Gender and Networks in a Local Voluntary-Sector EliteGwen Moore and J. Allen Whitt

Focusing on gender inequality in a local community elite, we investigate
the role of gender in access to and participation in networks of nonprofit
trustees in Louisville, Kentucky. We examine two types of network
relations: participation in the network of overlapping board memberships
(the "structural network") and interpersonal ties of collegiality and
friendship (the "social network"). Asking whether the gender hierarchy
found in most private and public sector organizations is mirrored in this
inner circle of trustees, with men occupying the most influential
positions in the structural and social networks, we find some male
advantage in the structural network. Men predominate in holding most board
seats, occupying multiple board seats, and in having slightly greater
network centrality. By contrast, women hold the edge in the social
network, with slightly greater centrality and higher levels of social
integration. Women's disadvantage in the structural network is at least
partly counterbalanced by their prominence in the social network of
trustees in Louisville. Results indicate that the local nonprofit sector
includes a small number of women (but no people of color) in leadership
roles.